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Why PHBs Fear Linux
Tin Foil Hat writes "Paul Murphy over at LinuxInsider examines the role IT text books play in business school curriculums and the misconceptions and misinformation that they present to students. If you've ever wondered why your PHB just doesn't get it when it comes to UNIX and Linux, this article is for you."
He read in Windows Magazine that it was bad.
" If you've ever wondered why your PHB just doesn't get it when it comes to UNIX and Linux, this article is for you."
Maybe they don't get it because they don't see Linux software on store shelves at Best Buy. Maybe they feel that using Linux would be a huge headache since they have NFI where the software actually comes from. It's percieved as some toy OS.
"Derp de derp."
i've heard either Pin Head Boss or Pointy Hair'd Boss..
any others?
I'm a little tea pot.
"Pointy headed boss". I am a PHB with an MBA and I never saw the word Linux in a textbook. However, being that I am natuarally geeky, I am slowly showing my company the benefits of open source.
"We are accountable for not only what we do, but also that which we don't do." -- Moliere
So when you remark "My PHB is a clueless, drooling half-wit." it's really a case of nuture over nature?
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=phb&r =67
Basically, it's a Bachelor of Philosophy.
It means either of 2 things: Bachelor of Philosophy (Philosophiae Baccalaureus) or Pointy Haired Boss (Dilbert reference)
I don't know why this is the case, but it really must affect the bias of so many students (and future PHBs). I suppose its a matter of people using what they know and what they expect the readers will be using that makes them decide to take this slant, but still seems to be a bad approach in the long-run.
Paul Lenhart writes words!
PHB = Pointy Haired Boss. This is a Dilbert reference. Dilbert's boss' hair is just in two little horns. PHB has come to mean any boss that is generally arbitrary, ignorant, and demanding, just like Dilbert's.
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
I think a lot of people just don't know what *nix is. Of course, textbooks like these don't help. Hell I'm in my senior year of a CS BS course of study, and there are students in my classes who couldn't use a terminal to save their lives or work remotely without a GUI. They just don't understand the system commands.
Sad
Sig* sig = theOneSig();
My PHB says it's too hard to install printers
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
"PHB: /PHB/
[Usenet; common; rarely spoken] Abbreviation, "Pointy-Haired Boss". From the Dilbert character, the archetypal halfwitted middle-management type. See also pointy-haired."
Souce: http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/P/PHB.html
It is always easy for a person who dislikes a platform to make it look bad and point out why it is bad. Text Books are no exception an author who doesn't particular care for an OS even though they are try to objective, will often get their feelings about it in some way or another either by ignoring the fact, giving negative examples, or use negativity resining to explain the features of an other product, "Example: Linux was designed in part because of the shortcomings in windows." While I don't say that Windows is Bad it is implied that Linux is better then windows, Implying that windows sucks. So I probably is best is to concentrate on your platforms strong points and not on its opponents week points, Thus saving yourself from a flame war with your boss. What works best for me is that I compare OS's to Tools Windows is a Hammer and Linux is like a screw driver. They do essentially the same thing put a piece of metal in wood. But they do it differently and having different tradeoffs. Most bosses can understand tradeoffs vs. Better and Worse because with better and worse flame wars occure when speaking about Tradeoffs then it seems much more level headed.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
If they are in tune and understand linux, they're not TRUE PHBs now, are they? : )
IIRC, AFAIK PHB means pointy-haired boss.
I remember when legal used to mean lawful, now it means some kind of loophole. - Leo Kessler
The article does a good job of picking the misleading and false statements about Unix and Linux in various leading textbooks.
And these are just the vague and false statements about one particular category of knowledge - the Linux OS. It begs the question: if they can be mistaken about this area and not taken the time to get their facts straight, what other areas are getting hand-waving instead of well-researched facts?
More than anything else, this points out some embarrassing shortcomings in these textbooks. Professors picking textbooks for their students would do well to pick better ones than these.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
They have stock in Microsoft.
Karma whorin' since 1999
Expect this to change now that IBM and Novell have to IT world all a-buzz. People are already being sent to Linux training (by their employers) in droves in my area.
It used to be political regimes that adultered the curriculums with indoctrination, nowdays, like everything else, it has become a business!
Fortunately there a growing number of Maverick enterprises, in all sectors, that are learing that success comes best by not following the rules. I guess that is what the lawyers are supposed to prevent;-)
And if you thought that was boring you obviously havn't read my Journal ;-)
Eeee, could it be because you don't get kickbacks when somethings free??
(Runs, ducks for cover!!)
Mod +5 Drunk
I was once told by an MBA that in order for my consulting services to be valued more, I should raise my rates. People automatically think that they get what they pay for, therefor a free distro can't be worth as much as an XP or Solaris license.
To err is human. To arr is pirate.
I received an email at our lug webmaster account asking for help with some questions about Linux from an MIS student. Here are the questions that her instructor had given them to research and answer:
1.What is Linux and who created it?
2.Why was it released into the public domain rather than copyrighted?
3. Is it possible to copyright anything that relates to Linux? If so, in what way?
I gave *long* answers, showed examples of copyright statements from the Linux source, explained that everybody who contributes to it, such as Linus or IBM, keep copyright, etc. I really wanted to meet her clueless instructor, but, maybe next time.
Keep in mind that these guys were pushing cobol up until about 3 years ago, so they probably think it's extremely cutting edge to push windows nt.
Do you have ESP?
Never have I once come across a mention of Microsoft (except maybe in the History section (Xenix)) any any of the classic books by Tanenbaum, Stevens, et al.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
However, I'll be the first to admit that most of the MIS-related courses gave only sparse mention of Linux. I think students in general are aware of Linux's existence, but little more than that. Were it up to them to make a platform decision after the basic business degree program, I'm sure that most students would sadly be grossly uninformed about Linux and OSS, and therefore drift over to the familiar Windows environments.
Could it be that many PHB's fear the penguin because of the illogical, emotionally-based arguments so many Linux zealots constantly use to push their agenda? I mean, many of the nutcases I've heard from speak of Linux like the coming of some New World Order, reminiscent of how Communists pitched their ideas back during the fifties. PHB's take one look at people like that and say "there's no way in hell I'm going to trust someone so emotionally involved in this to make a valid business decision."
There have been an increasing number of articles, posts, and so forth coming from notable people in the Linux community pointing out how the zealotry is really becoming a serious impediment to further Linux progress. In particular, they cite many Linux zealot's inability to take any sort of constructive criticism and their steadfast belief that the users should conform to the OS instead of the other way around. They say this is bad for Linux, and I think they're right on.
Microsoft is using this irrational zealot behavior to convince more PHB's that Linux is some kind of cult, not just an operating system. The more outspoken the zealots are, the more they hurt things.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I work for a major defense contractor, where I've been integrating systems for numerous years. One of the primary reasons we don't do LINUX is because there's no profit in it for us. If we integrate a Sun, SGI, PC, etc., we get to tack on our 10% to the OS costs...and yes, I do believe this is a huge waste of taxpayer money, but that's how it's done. You can't make a profit by saving the govt. money.
Just another day in Paradise
...and while I haven't read them all, I find that their treatment of OSes is very general indeed. They talk more about computer systems and networks, and the foundations of these, than they do about which OS is good or bad and what's different about them. In the book I read, an OS comparison showed about 7-8 OSes, including Windows, Mac and Linux, and also had a case study about switching to Linux. (Note that the article doesn't really say that MS Windows is mentioned *so much more* than Linux, just that Linux is not mentioned often.)
This article, IMHO, doesn't really show the reality that 1) Linux even 5 years ago was merely a speck in most people's minds, 2) that Unix does have its downsides, and that 3) the authors of these books are probably running Windows as their native OS! This hardly adds up to the kind of bias the article suggests.
2-3 years from now you will start to see Linux information trickle down into these books, as they publish new versions. A couple may retain a "bias", but I bet that most will realistically track what has changed in the marketplace since the previous version of their book. To expect that formal education moves at the same speed as economic developments is silly. Education moves much more slowly, and it's got nothing to do with bias.
I work for a Fortune 100 telecom company who isn't terribly pro-linux. But one day I counted up all the open-sourced software we use on a daily basis, there's a ton of it... if someone ripped OSS software away from us, we'd be in a world of hurt.
I was once told by an MBA that in order for my consulting services to be valued more, I should raise my rates. People automatically think that they get what they pay for, therefor a free distro can't be worth as much as an XP or Solaris license.
:)
I agree, and there's more to it than that:
Consider Godiva chocolates. I've read studies that state that blind taste tests cannot rate them higher than Russell-Stover chocolates, a much less expensive chocolate. The reason why Godiva exists is because people want to pay more for chocolate. It's part of a high-class lifestyle. They need to feel high-class, and they need to fit in with their high-class friends. This same phenomenon is true with many other products. Just replace "high-class" with "cool", and you'll see what had fueled the sale of Nike shoes for years.
I'm not interested in using products to make me feel like I'm better or, or in using products to impress my friends. I am, however, interested in selling products to people who feel that way. It seems to me that the seller is in the much more intelligent position than the buyer.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
Some people are freaked out by the notion that Linux's source code is "open", and, as such, don't understand how it could possibly be a secure platform if all of its workings can be easily seen. Yeah, I know, it's wrong, but that's what a lot of people think. A lot of people think something freely available like Linux can't possibly be secure.
Our CIO is a sharp guy, understands that Linux is the appropriate technical answer to several of the problems we have, and understands the value of open-source software in genereal. The problem is, we got _the letter_, and he's understadably not interested in becoming a headline-making company for the wrong reasons. It's annoying and frustrating, but until SCO gets slapped down hard and goes away, we have to consider the legal/political aspect as well as the technical merits. Yes, it's BS. Yes, their claims are worthless, but yes, he has chosen not to put us at risk as a target of SCO. He expressed the same frustration that we techies are feeling.
If SCO is just a shill for Microsoft, and is trying to delay the inevitable slide away from Windows, well, in our case, it's having some of that effect. If they're not doing this as an agent of Microsoft, well, it has the same effect.
Actually, Pin Head is one of the main characters in Hellraiser. You may think that the that is proper comparision, but anyway, PHB = Pointy Haired Boss.
"Want to know why most business analysts and venture capitalists simply don't get it with respect to Unix? Take a look at the computer books they study while working toward their MBA, financial analysis certificate or accounting designation, and you'll understand that their ignorance isn't entirely their fault."
This is the first paragraph of the article. Now think about this. Basically what it says is that whatever the system (in this case educational institutions) feed them, that is what they believe. It is very sad to see that many professionals in fact do not spend the time to learn about their field outside of what is fed to them in the classroom. Their educational diet is pretty bad. If one really wants to know everything one can about a particular field, then one should take the time to read that which lies outside of the institution where they are learning it. Btw, this also shows how corporations are integrated with the education system. Never trust just one source for all your facts.
True, it isn't entirely the fault of the student, but what do we do about it? One idea comes to mind, find more sources for information besides just a book your school was encouraged to buy.
There is hope though. Linux is one very powerful example of how the internet has changed the way we find information and work together on common goals.
Question everything.
Are books even adequate? During my years as a student of Computer Science (high school and college) I always found that the information in textbooks was outdated, even if it had *ever* been accurate. Even now, every time I buy a programming book I find that a more recent version has been released with new functionality that is not covered in the book.
IT moves so quickly that by the time the information makes it to print, new information is available elsewhere. Because of the static nature of books, they only get less informative over time. These professors should encourage their students to use online resources that are updated regularly, or journals that are published faster and more frequently than books, if they want to be on the cutting-edge.
This is the one I've been told by my boss (although he does exagerate a bit...):
Linux is a melting pot of unfinished softwares branded by zealots with way too much time on their hands and a very bad understanding of business practices.
Noteworthy: he does run the inventory servers on Linux, his opinions was forged after having to maintain said servers, he also mentionned that this "free" alternative cost him over 20 000$ in freelance maintenance personnel per year after he decided he wasn't up to the task of maintaining them.
I cannot really blame him for his opinions since he has at least tried, for real.
MS ia a publicly traded company.
MS has a large share of the consumer and business market.
MS has a business plan, sells multiple products and services and posts a profit every quarter. Moreover, they produce regular financial results, results and filings.
MS has been in business for several years.
MS has many employess in several countries.
MS has numerous stockholders and anaylysts understand what MS is trying to accomplish as a business.
MS is run by the wealthiest man in the US - (so many people correlate this as an indicator of "how good their products are" - go figure).
From a business school perpective, these things are relevant.
When Linux is brought up, it is often ambiguous to understand how the distributions and linux-baseed software companies plan to make money ("If its free and the code is publicly available, how can you make money?"). Also, it is hard to relate "the open source community" into dollars and cents.
Mind you, this is not neccessarily my opinion, just an observation of those whose opinion's validate the article's report.
I think he pretty identified the primary reason Linux has been slow to catch on in mainstream business.
It's all fun having a bunch of geeks get together and talk about how great Howard Dean is and how c00| Linux is; but we're still very nieve when it comes to educating the decision makers in the world. I'd love to seem some discussion about how to get Linux written up in more business textbooks. I would have thought the RHAT IPO and IBM would have helped this; but wow that article showed that misconsceptions still abound.
Let me share some thoughts
1. PHBs dont' give a damm about linux/windows/apple.
2. PHBs tend to have little more going through their head like getting the payroll running for the next month which pays for your cool toys
3. PHBs understand very well how to play with your psychology and depress you or make you happy like a little puppet.
So, think twice.
- People who believe other people have no right to live, got no right to live ...
But what's the excuse for this?
OH NO! FILE SHARING? WE'D BETTER GO BACK TO DOS!Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
PHB have no clue about it because it isn't offered as standard by the major PC makers. If when you were buying a PC and you forgot to tell them to ship Windows XP they by default shipped SuSE or Mandrake then maybe they might know what it is.
Now at the Best Buy it's not that Linux is missing from the shelves. It's that applications that Run on Linux are missing on the shelves. Give me Quickbooks, OfficeXP, or Adobe with little "for Linux" stickers on them and we might get noticed.
Most PHBs don't even know what an OS is. I've had plenty of well educated people, when I ask them, "What OS do you run?" tell me Word. They know on some level that they run Windows but they are clueless about what it really is. They just hear the name and they parrot that. Word, Windows, whatever...
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
and you don't extensively cover OSS, the most significant movement in computing today..if you don't cover linux, which effectively runs the web, you're not doing your job. End of story.
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
With Microsoft running on over 90% of the computers used today, yes, textbooks will be a bit Microsoft-centric...that's just common sense. Want to make things fair? Take the *nix market share, then devote that much time in class to it.
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
You're aware that you can purchase commercial distributions of Linux that are quite pricy, right? Something like Red Hat's high end server product, Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Server starts at $1500, for example. I'm reasonably sure you can find a Linux distributor that will be happy to do business with you if your primary requirement is high cost.
May we never see th
i teach high school history. from many of text books, you would think that the US is the greatest perpetrator of evil in the world. or at least, no better than most other nations. (okay slash trolls, flame on)
textbooks are notoriously bad, for the most part. textbook publishers have to sell textbooks and there are a whole range of issues they have to deal with. i was a member of the textbook adoption committee a few years ago and i had the privilege (?) of speaking with a few of the reps. holy crap!! it should be no different i IT. the people who have the loudest voices (i.e. political groups who squak about "representation") or the most money (corporations that need product placement), get their voices heard the loudest. it is disgusting, which is why i use the text for very little of the class.
here's a blatant example of the 10th grade Mod Civ book. Hitler and the holocaust get an entire section in the WW2 chapter, yet the multiple 10's of millions Stalin killed gets 2 sentences. hmmm...
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
How many times is Windows mentioned in these books? Our author does not include this in the article so if were making comparisons lets at least know the other side.
Traditionally Unix and Linux have bastions in CompSci departments and MIS departments have skewed to the Windows world. Microsoft has heavily infuenced US business schools with low priced licensing and faculty sponsored research, Linux does not have this advantage. Alos, I would mention that Linux+Unices only have 8% of the marketplace while Windows occupies 85% therefore if Linux/Unix have 3 references and you see more then 30 references for Windows then it really is out of whack with reality.
Outside of Slashdot and in the real world, Linux is a minority group, (not to say it will always be that way) and therefore will have less coverage because of it. (I am a fan of Trance music but I do not complain that my local Best Buy does carry the kind of selection I can get in a Miami independent record store devoted to Trance/Dance music). The store and also the author of these books are playing to the largest segment of the population. I would take a guess that more people know how to manipulate digital pictures on a computer then know how to use a Unix-based system.
Finally, university textbooks are NOTORIOUS for being behind the curve when it comes to new developments in fields so you can't really fault the books for being behind the times when it comes to Linux, it is only since 1999-2000 that Linux began to get real traction in the marketplace.
I guess what I am getting at is that maybe we shouldn't teach them anything about IT or programming. Maybe we should teach them how to be humble enough to ask for advice from those of us who know that stuff, instead of pretending they know everything? I know we can be just as biased, but lets say you have a few knowledgeable employees, ask them all and make your best decision from that. I don't know how to manage others or run a business, I wouldn't try without getting input from someone who does first, why should they?
Take for example the requirements that the how the publishers revise textbooks with such high frequency that it forces students to buy new copies instead of using a used copy of an older edition.
The publishers first priority is to make money for their shareholders, not educate people. M$'s first priority is to maximize the dollars of profit per share, not provide the best computing solution.
I took an 11 week course (we are on quarters) in Management of Information Systems. During the entire 11 week period my proffesor constantly damned the "cathederal approach to software engineering" we refer to as Linux (the book coined the term). His arguement was that it is not easy to use, it is not guarenteed to continue into the future, and there is no one to be held accountable for failures or for fixes.
That being said, he refused to take a copy of knoppix, refused to play with it when I loaded it for him on the school's computer, and refused to believe that I wasn't playing a trick on him. Because he was the boss of the class and was handing out the grades, I was only able to convience one member of the class on the possibilities of class.
Oh yeah, the prof was a teacher at Northwestern and at DePaul. Yeesh.....
Victory is gained, not in knowing your opponents next move, but in preempting them.
ARe you kidding? Everyone knows that Linux is a hacker Operating System. They also know that hackers break into your computer over the phone line and steal your credit card information! Crackers are just what you put cheese on...
/sarcasm
Ignorance:1
Knowledge:0
Pretty Hot Babe
Pipe-wielding Hoard of Baboons
Pierced Head Banger
Packed Hand Brush
Pickled Hypothalamus Borsht
Oh, there are so many more! Somebody Please put a Head in my Bullet!
The noted symptoms are indicative of problems in education in general, not necessarily specific to MIS. Keep in mind that it takes a while for a textbook to get written, edited & published. Then it takes time to get it approved for use & curricula to be developed, then you have to wait for the next semester / school year to start. If you were to publish a current, accurate textbook today, you'd be lucky to get it into a classroom before fall 2005. Those students wouldn't likely hit the market until 2007.
Now take a look at the mainstream press & how long it takes them to catch up to whats current in IT. If the journalists that cover this stuff on a daily basis take their sweet time opening their minds to new software / OSes / development styles, etc. how long do you think it will take a textbook publisher, much less a professor?
When I was in college around the beginning of the last decade, the best class I had used business week to drive discussions. It was a great way to get up to speed with the current issues facing business. We were discussing biotech as 'the next big thing'. Note that this was back around the same time that Linus was writing the 1.0 kernel. The 3.5" floppy drive was taking over as a new standard. Internet? WTF is an internet?
If you want to get current information to wet-behind-the-ears MBA/MIS types, you have to figure out how to convince academians that they need to have flexible curricula that changes as fast as technology. Not necessarily follow the bleeding edge, but find a periodical that will cover a wide range of tech issues.
The problem isn't with the textbooks, per se, but with the academic institutions that continue to use old, out of date textbooks - which, in the tech field, any published textbook would be!
IT's funny since most of the hard core business operations run on either Mainframes (running MVS with UNIX System Services), a commercial UNIX, or Linux/FreeBSD (for slightly smaller apps) etc.
How about a book called: "O'Reilly's Using UNIX/Linux guide for MBAs"
Funny, at work, the senior Oracle DBA is a huge proponent of Solaris and AIX on big machines. He's almost done with his MBA. But then again he used to be a UNIX/AIX System Admin.
From the article: For example if vendor A's product runs on the UNIX operating system and vendor B's runs on Windows NT, vendor A may try to influence the company to view the UNIX platform as a requirement. Simultaneously, vendor B might try to include features that are difficult to obtain through Unix. From this, our future MBA or CPA learns that Unix people are bigots..."
.NET and VB/C#...
It was mentioned in another thread that there is the definite stereotype of the superioristic, socially inept, f-you if you don't get it or cannot make it work by writing for {insert toolkit here} with {insert (scripting) language here} on {insert distro here}. Many *nix people come across as only being interested in technology as the means and the end, and only that technology which they approve of as being cool.
Your typical MBA doesn't care how cool one language/database/operating system is versus another, they want results, and they want you to spell it out in a cogent cost/benefit summary that they can understand. If all you can puke out is "I am a Unix God and Windows sucks monkey balls" why are you surprised when the consultant with half a clue, an expensive suit, and a degree in technical writing hands him a proposal that is in his native "MBA" language that wins the bid? Could it be that our consultant was not effectively unrefuted by anything substantial from the foaming-at-the-mouth *nix advocate?
It is true that Linux will not be a dominant force on the desktop until there is a pretty, easy to use, intuitive, and well supported GUI. In the same way, until someone does a better marketing job than the boys from Redmond, keep current on
I've no idea why my dungeons and dragons player's handbook is afraid :(
--I hate big sigs.
In reading the article I couldn't help but wonder if this kind of exclusion of choices in business is covered elsewhere in business classes.
I would bet it would be highly unlikely that a business course on selecting vendors for materials and services contains absolute adherence to a "single source" philosophy. In fact just the opposite is taught. Single source vendors for materials an services are heavily frowned upon in business. A major point of controlling business costs is tied up in pitting vendors for the same or similar materials against one another.
Yet in the absolutely worthless world of MIS, a single source of supply for operating systems on which to run your business is seemingly extolled as a VIRTUE!! All of the textbooks mentioned in this story are worthless drivel, with no critical critique of true use of software in business. No other aspect of a business would be allowed to be beholden to one supplier the way business IT is. And the peopld in charge of business IT don't just accept it, they demand it.
MIS degrees should be banned.
People are already being sent to Linux training (by their employers) in droves in my area.
.la file is. I definitely could not set up a Linux firewall or routing system without *heavily* drawing from a reference work, not like those Cisco gurus can do with their hardware, where they just happily rattle off commands. I don't have a clue how emerge works, or what its drawbacks are. I don't know how to configure Metacity. I've never seen YaST. I barely know any PHP. Perl's objects are a closed book to me. I develop software, and yet it's still a complete mystery to me how people can write autoconf files without painfully slogging through huge masses of GNU documentation and looking for likely candidates and doing days of cutting and pasting and trial and error. I've never used subversion. These are all standard Linux tools that you'll find on a common distribution.
This should be interesting.
I can't see any kind of training course that effectively teaches someone Linux. You *might* manage to teach someone the GUI configuration front end to Red Hat's current release in a week (including enough background concepts to allow them to understand it). Not much else, though. You definitely can't learn to admin Linux effectively in a week any more than you can learn to admin Windows in a week. I'd go so far as to say that six months of well-thought out curriculum and constant practice probably isn't enough to hammer all the important concepts into someone's head of the workings of just the full set of daemons in a distro, all the important POSIX commands, different security implications, the administrative stuff that a distro uses (keep in mind that this is just for *one* distro) the ins and outs of packge systems, troubleshooting procedures, appropriate forums to go for help and etiquette in those forums, rescue procedures, networking issues...
Maybe it's expecting too much. Most Windows admins that I've run into are barely more than instruction-manual-following monkeys, whereas there are some *scarily* knowledgeable UNIX gurus out there (could be because there are people with thirty years of UNIX experience out there, but none with more than eight of Win95+ experience). You might be able to take a short training course on how to do very basic operation of a system, but if anything breaks, you aren't going to have a *clue* what to do.
God, I've been using Linux heavily for years, and I still don't know standbys like awk (well, just enough to get by, but not much) or anything more than a single operator for sed. I *still* find new commands that I haven't seen before. Groff is a closed book to me. I know a bit of Apache's workings, but not loads. I don't know how to set the systemwide timezone in a distro-independent manner (I could look it up, though). I know almost nothing about sendmail's cf syntax -- without a GUI config frontend, I'd be helpless to get sendmail running, and probably mostly helpless to fix anything more than a basic problem. I don't know what a
May we never see th
... it's so apparent that the title "college graduate" doesn't mean as much as it should. The discrepancies I bet are the same in any number of disciplines. Over specialization -as the famous quote loosely goes- are for insects. And that degree in over specialization might indicate a severe lack of other skills, some of which are necessary in making a well rounded human, in any employment position. Example,these text books. OK, a requirement for that boss management degree, but really, none of these people ever go to a normal bookstore and walk by the magazine rack and see the linux magazines? None of them read any of the tech news sites on the net? I dunno, seems strange to me, but no more strange than all the people who can rattle off hollywood movies and the stars names, or their local sports "team" stars, but who cannot name their own US representative in the house. Part of our culture I guess...
Incidently, that was my impression watching the trump apprentice series as well. I don't watch very much television at all, but for some reason I was interested in that concept, so I've been watching it. All those young people with degrees (except one) and good paying jobs, but almost all of them seemed to lack quite a bit of real world common sense, and all of them had unreasonable expectations, IMO. I know it's stupid reality TV, etc, but still, that was the impression I got.
Yeah, uhm... I didn't write that. Notice the "Source:" part. You suggest that I took the time to consider and write an all-inclusive definition, where in fact all I did was a 10 second google search. Don't be so quick to sling insults.
I'm not a graphics guy so I can't really say if GIMP is that good or bad. But most people have never used it. Those that do graphic work have used Adobe. Adobe is needed on the Linux desktop for the same reason Quickbooks is. If they provide software for Linux then end users can justify the change. Other wise it is a case of abandon everything known about your computer, all you past software, all your data and make the switch. One reason Apple doesn't sell as much as they can is because of some of those issues. Software, data, and training are big investments. To most end users the computer was a bitch to learn the first time and they don't want to go through that again.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
Hey, it's not just higher education.
2 years ago, I had the option of sending my kid to a better public grade school; I decided to test the waters by meeting with a few of the teachers.
I asked "what was the major cause of the U.S. Civil War?"
and "is the U.S. a republic, or a democracy? whats the difference?"
The answers literally scared me. in both schools, near identical, both wrong.
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
The project fails: you get blamed for choosing perceived "flaky" technology, even if that wasn't the cause of the failure.
Say you choose MS instead. The project fails, but in this case you avoid blame because you did it "by the book" (literally), even if the technology in this case did cause the failure.
If the project succeeds, it's probably OK either way ... although some of your colleagues still might look at you funny if you chose the weirdo "free" stuff. You might score points with upper management for saving some costs on licensing fees, but then again, they just might not care.
As a middle-manager, it's very likely you're more interested in avoiding blame than in taking risks that could get you fired. Until general attitudes toward MS change (which is happening), middle management isn't going to be a lot of help.
A long time ago, I read a book by Paul Reps titled "Zen Flesh, Zen Bones", that includes a story, "A Cup of Tea", that is particularly appropriate given the material in this article. I reproduce the story here:
A Cup of Tea
The PHBs have had their heads filled so full with material, and are so unwilling/scared/unable to unlearn it, that their education becomes a liability. Corporations encounter the same kind of problem when they develop "core rigidities" and are unable to rapidly adapt to the ever-changing marketplace.Aside: someone has been kind enough to reproduce this story, along with a number of other excerpts from "101 Zen Stories", and they can be found here.
If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law;
The article is very interesting, but it seems that people have been sidetracked by the easy problem of explaining the meaning of PHB, but avoided the difficult problem of how we can contribute to helping correct the problem of poor management text books and poorly informed managers.
His arguement was that it is not easy to use, it is not guarenteed to continue into the future, and there is no one to be held accountable for failures or for fixes.
.NET. This is all covering a span of under twenty years.
Wow.
not easy to use
I'd give it currently, from an end-user standpoint, about roughly equal to Windows. It is different, though, which means that for a user skilled in Windows, it is more difficult to use at first, until they become familiar with the differences.
it is not guarenteed to continue into the future
I will bet a million bucks that the Linux kernel will be around longer than the Windows NT kernel. There is one company working on the NT kernel -- there are many people working on Linux. Many companies have an investment and the ability and desire to continue using it, and nobody has the ability to "discontinue" Linux.
Or did he mean the APIs? UNIX system and library APIs have been more or less constant since the *'70*s. On Windows, a programmer has had to learn (get ready for it) DOS goodies, Win16, Win32, potentially the missing functionality in Windows CE and the added functionality in WinNT (which, frankly, is vastly more of a pain in the ass than the differences between even "different operating systems" like FreeBSD and Linux). Toss MFC into the mix. Now Microsoft's moving their developers to
Or maybe he was talking about the applications? Sysadmins might learn an application and then it's yanked out from under their feet...but sendmail (then called delivermail) shipped in the *'70*s. How about Apache? It started out as NCSA httpd, and was the second web server ever written.
there is no one to be held accountable for failures or for fixes
Absurd. Unless you are Dell or the US Government (and then only *maybe*), Microsoft does not *care* whether there's a bug in Windows. Name one instance where someone successfully sued Microsoft for a flaw in, say, Windows, and recieved damages for the problems caused by it. You can call Microsoft "accountable" all you want -- they are simply not.
In the Open Source world, I can sit down right now and email the main author, the development team, the maintainer, or the author of a particular feature (and usually *exact* line of code that I care about). I can generally enter bugs into the same bug-tracking system that the developers themselves use. If I'm in a hurry and need a contract for a fix within a certain time bound, I can hire a contractor to fix a bug or add a feature and send that fix to them, even if my company does not have any in-house developers capable of fixing the problem. I can discuss the problem at a technical level and point out the exact lines of code causing the problem publically, with every interested eye in the world trained on the bug. Linux has seen bug fix times for crucial bugs on the order of less than an hour ("there's a TCP bug that needs to be fixed *NOW*) "we need a fix out ASAP". Let's say you use Photoshop and report a bug to Adobe. Maybe, if you're lucky, they'll fix a bug. WilberWorks (a company formed by some GIMP developers) sells service contracts with guarantees that bugs you run into and require fixes for will be fixed within ten *days*. Try getting Adobe interested in doing something like that. Plus, if I don't like WilberWorks, I can hire anyone else to deal with my problem -- there are consultants and programmers-for-hire all over, and I can pay them whatever it takes or have them sign whatever contract I want to get them to fix my problem. Getting someone to be accountable to ensure that Open Source works is much easier than closed source products, where you have only one option -- the original vendor, which generally does not provide support on par with open source developers that provide support contracts (at least of the ones I've noticed). Most closed-source companies have churn, and do not keep developers on a single project. Microsoft, for exampl
May we never see th
Why the huge emphasis on textbooks? It's not like PHB's stop listening, learning, and adapting after they leave school.
Don't you think these PHB types talk to each other sometimes? Don't you think they read trade magazines? Word has and will continue to get around about Linux.
Big Companies that use Linux:
* Bank of America
* Autozone
* J.P. Morgan
* Golman-Sachs
The list is quite long.
Dunno what kind of answer you were expecting - this kind of question you can argue until the cows come home. It could be anything from socioeconomics, state's rights arguments, clash of cultures, butthead political leaders, foreign provocateurs - there was enough crap going on back then so that you can find a decent argument for just about any cause of the Civil War.
GNU/Linux (the OS) does everything Windows (the OS) does, and then some. Most GNU/Linux distributions include tons of applications that Windows users have to pay hundreds of dollars for, such as Word Processing. GNU/Linux has support for dozens of filesystems, not just its own. GNU/Linux has built-in security and productivity features that have either only recently appeared in Windows, or are architecturally impossible to include. And new versions of GNU/Linux Operating Systems, with better functionality, arrive every year.
Access to source code makes my time-to-market faster, because I can fix problems now rather than wait for vendors to respond. I have access to dozens of office applications, browsers, and e-mail programs, rather than being locked into just one or two. There are no restrictive licenses preventing me from changing how things work or spreading things around.
I can download, install, and use GNU/Linux for free. I only have to pay for support if I want it; if I do, GNU/Linux's higher uptime, greater stability and security over Windows means I will be spending less money keeping my system working and make more money doing my business.
This is not just the state of the art; GNU/Linux has an army of developers that dwarfs Microsoft's staff. GNU/Linux is improving more rapidly than Windows is, and in every aspect. GNU/Linux can afford to waste thousands of man-years on failed projects and branches because they have so many resources to spare, whereas any single company has to keep development costs in check to ensure profitability.
Nobody can compete with more features, more freedom, and lower cost over an extended period of time -- not even a company as large and successful Microsoft. In the long term, Microsoft will have to do what IBM has done -- adopt GNU/Linux and a service-based model. Otherwise, Microsoft won't survive.
Fifteen years from now, everything will be GNU/Linux.
I'm still doing my MBA and actually Linux shows up in one of the corporate strategy case studies as a direct study item. Sadly the lecturer decided it would be unfair to set a question on that study ;)
On our course I've seen little "pro-windows" save the choice of OS the university made for desktops. Some of the lecturers including the economics lecturer find aspects of the GPL model fascinating.
Alan
I think it was all the people shooting at each other.
Illinois Institute of Technology has a business school that offers an Information Systems program. I'd figure that there would be some synergies between the geek-side and the white-collar drone side of the school. I was wrong.
.NET.
The textbooks rarely mentioned UNIX or VMS unless it was during a discussion of ancient legacy database or EDI systems or a treatise on the history of client-server computing. There were courses that were specifically slanted toward certain products like Visual Basic, and ASP, with no mention of Delphi or PHP. Database discussions and case studies involving databases were always about Oracle or Microsoft products. There was never a mention of MySQL or PostgreSQL. Linux only came up because my boyfriend is an advocate. We'd discuss equivalent Linux technologies with professors. Those professors who were interested only felt that it wasn't worth it to try to teach those technologies to students since the students want to learn these sexy enterprise computing acronyms like ASP and
To make things worse, the entire school network had been rebuilt using all Microsoft technologies on the front end and a couple of IRIX or SunOS systems on the back far away from prying eyes. The result was a complete divorcing of UNIX from all aspects of computing among the student body with the effect of new students not being exposed to anything but Microsoft Windows (including thin clients). This bothers me a lot since I feel my UNIX and VAX experience has helped shaped my understanding of computing more than what Windows has done.
There is a perception of UNIX and Linux being institutionalized in the university system. UNIX is what was whereas Windows is what will be. Linux is for local chapter ACM members who have long hair and date ugly girls. Windows is for businessmen who drive luxury cars and get blowjobs from beautiful women they hardly know. UNIX is a typewriter in the age of Microsoft Office. UNIX is that mysterious blue box (SGI Indy) sitting in a basement office serving the school's webmail system, and the VAX is a hobbled workhorse that's being put out of its misery as I type.
*Bang* Hear that? That was the sound of six years worth of my emails being erased forever as a VAX completes its last process.
You mean they're not? Take a look at /. buddy.
-David
is the U.S. a republic, or a democracy? whats the difference?
Tick question! Gotcha! It's a corporate oligarchy.
So UNIX is better because you have to go out of your way to do something?
Because you have to go out of your way to do something less desireable, the "non-common case". If it was really easy to, say, blow away all your files instead of a user having to go "out of their way", I'd call that a misfeature.
Seriously, I think the no-sharing default is to help prevent anamalous behavior. Sharing a file requries extra planning; you wouldn't share a block of memory between two threads, read/write, without a lock; exclusive access provides a primitive kind of locking. If you don't want the file to be locked, you only have to pass one extra flag when opening the file. But you are right that it is silly to deny read access when it's only open for read anyways.
Tell me you've never gotten a sharing violation when using Windows. Describe to me under what circumstances you would want to avoid reading from a file by two processes at once. Tell me you haven't rebooted when installing software. I've used both systems, and haven't ever hit problems with the UNIX approach, and the Windows approach has caused me countless grief. I've worked with a Windows fileserver and a cluster of machines that were running MS Visual Studio and Explorer. Inevitably, MS Visual Studio on some machine would have a file locked or Explorer a directory locked, and to delete a directory on one machine I'd have to go to every machine killing off all the processes that might be using the file/directory. Incredibly stupid. On *IX, you blow away a file, and the OS refcounts the thing. It doesn't break any applications currently using the file -- the file just doesn't have a directory entry any more, and when the last application using a file goes away, so does the file.
If you don't want the file to be locked, you only have to pass one extra flag when opening the file
That's not the point. The problem is that *developers don't*. They plop a zero in that field and don't worry about it. The net effect is that a user can't delete a file because something has it open without passing the shared flag. He didn't write the program, he doesn't have the source, and there are roughly zero instances where not locking the file is going to cause problems. You don't see folks in the UNIX world walking around with corrupted files, you know?
Yeah, sharing violation errors. However, sharing violation errors are obvious and direct. Insufficent locking can result in corruption and intermittent behavior that is hard to diagnose.
Yes, in theory. And in theory memory overcommits can cause massive unpredictable system failure, but you don't see your typical Linux system dropping on its feet. In theory languages that use a calling stack (C, C++, etc) can have completely unavoidable and unpredictable deaths due to exhausting memory by growing their stack when there aren't any pages left, but it's not a real-world problem either. People don't write apps that try dumping data to the same file at once (if they did, say by writing to a log file, Linux users would probably see mysteriously corrupt entries and Windows users would probably see mysteriously missing entries). Hell, every 1/(very large number) times key generation fails uncatchably for any prime-factor based cryptosystem, but we don't worry about it. They aren't real-world issues.
I created a new directory, changed to it in a command prompt, and tried to delete it. Explorer told me that it couldn't be deleted because it was in use. This is on XP (not that Explorer is anywhere near perfect). If I didn't know what has something open, there is always proces explorer, where I can search for handles and force them to close.
Not in my testing, which was over a file server. XP failed silently, whereas 2000 failed with an error. I could be wrong, but I doubt that Process Explorer will let me kill off said handles from a remote system (and certainly not if the access is from a different account...I might even have to go sit in front of the file server to run Process Explorer...I'll admit that it could have been handy other times that I've run into issues though, and didn't know about it).
May we never see th
i'm a self-tough programmer and went through school majoring in management information systems -- miami university (oxford, oh)
... nothing more. very much instilling into students that they were more deserving of being the big dick because they were 'management'
'pathetic' is the only word that can really, accurately describe the level of technical instruction in that department. this is a PHB hatchery, a dilbert incubator. they couldn't have done a better job of being completely avoidant of linux/unix/anythingotherthanmicrosoft. in all seriousness, the only place either unix or linux were ever mentioned was as a vocabulary word -- among the slew of other acronyms we had to memorize with essentially constituted a majority of our 'education'. i swear to this day that school was 0wned by microsoft.
even worse, throughout my entire time there, professors would repeatedly degrade the intelligence of programmers (systems analysis majors) -- as simply 'code monkeys'
i left that school with a degree that essentially, to me, means nothing, and reflects little more than a collection of multiple choice tests, little/no technical skills, a slew of acronyms, a taste of "i'm a manager!" fratboy wanker ego.
This isn't the point they are trying to make, but I have noticed that in the business class I was forced to take, the entire chapter which mentioned computer-based things had many terms which I had never heard of in the IT world. When I pointed this out to my teacher, she asserted that these were the terms the business world used. It would appear that the business world views the IT world form a completely different place than IT views itself, to the point where they have made up their own nonsensical(to me anyways) terms for the exact same concepts. If we can't even agree on what to call things, how could we agree that Linux is a viable strategy for many businesses?
once you go slack, you never go back
Sit in front of the file server? What's wrong with terminal services?
"Whats that you're doing?"
"Its this great Open Source project - here, check out the url"
"Why are you using that Open Source crap? *scowl* Can't we buy some proper software? Stop using it now."
You also get those PHBs who know they don't get it, and will never get it. They hate you because you do get it, and it makes the PHB feel inferior and stupid. It is then his job to put you down and make your life a misery, just like you have done to him.
It is also this same PHB that will happily run his entire company on pirate copies of the software that he loves so much, when Open Source implementations could legally save him all that money and create a more effective and productive team! I guess he wouldn't be a PHB otherwise... ;) How many times have *you* heard "Lets just buy 1 copy and then we can install that everywhere".
Personally, I think more education is needed but that is not going to happen with a PHB. A PHB gets his learnin' from banner adds and the gutter press (assuming they can read). Maybe if there were "Linux makes you smarter and better looking" adverts they'd go with it? After all, its just as true as "Microsoft Software helps protect your data against virus attacks"...
If windows never existed, then Apple, perhaps even Commodore/Amiga or Atari would have a place in business alongside sun, ibm, dec etc... x86 machines would still be around and mostly running os/2..
A diversity of systems coupled with the internet would FORCE vendors to adopt cross-platform standards, such standards did not exist in the past because there was little demand for data portability between systems, microsoft is still living in the old days when each vendor created their own systems which weren`t compatible with anything else. There are no standards, the sitation with microsoft is no different than if everyone used macs or everyone used amigas etc, the only sense of standardization comes from dominance..
The world would be a much better place if all the players had been forced to adopt standards to compete in the modern interconnected world.. Unix did this to some extent atleast, but not far enough in some ways.. That way we could choose the best tool for the job and be guaranteed compatibility with standards, rather than being forced to use the only tool for the job.
Look at the auto industry, how would you like being forced to drive a yugo because no other cars are allowed on the road you have to drive to work?
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